"Everything about her says squeaky-clean," Frawley said into his car phone. "Except for the fact that she's lying about something."
"Uh-huh," said Dino. "That the only reason you're buzzing around her?"
"I'm not buzzing," said Frawley, thinking back to her stalling him.
"Then what are you doing out there, Friday after six?"
"Canton is on my way home."
"Every single town on the South Shore of Massachusetts is on your way home, Frawl. You waste three hours a day driving back and forth between Charlestown and Lakeville. I like your devotion to living among the bandits, but this is getting to be an addiction. Frawl."
"Yeah, Dean?"
"Spring is in bloom. Know what that means?"
"A young man's fancy turns to...?"
"Bank robbing. And buzzing around pretty flowers. You've got approximately sixty hours off ahead of you. That's your weekend, federally mandated and enforced. Take off the tie and get yourself laid. No more running ten miles, stopping to yawn, running ten more. For my sake."
Frawley hung a left at the end of Excalibur Street. "Copy that. Over and out."
6
The Sponsor
T
HEY HUDDLED AT THE back of Sacred Heart like father and confessor: the middle-aged man sitting relaxed, his left hand gripping the pew in front of him, gold band glowing brassy in the candlelight; and the younger man, half-turned in the row before him, watching bodies rise from the basement like ghosts wearing the raincoats they died in. The coffeepot downstairs had been emptied and rinsed, all the munchkins eaten, the stirrers and sugars boxed away, the trash bagged and pulled.
"Good meeting," said Frank G., the middle-aged man, fingers drumming the dark wood. "Crowded tonight."
"Weekends," agreed Doug M., as he was known here.
Frank G. was a Malden firefighter, father of two young boys, on his second marriage. In three years, that was the sum total of personal information Doug's sponsor had let slip. Nine years dry, Frank G. was devoted to the program, especially the
Anonymous
part, even though-- or maybe because-- Sacred Heart was apparently his neighborhood parish. Doug drove fifteen minutes north from Charlestown for every meeting, specifically to avoid having to pour out his soul to familiar faces, which seemed to him very much like taking a nightly dump out on his own front porch.
"So what's the word here, studly, how's things going?"
Doug nodded. "Going good."
"You spoke well down there. Always do."
Doug shrugged it off. "Got a lot to talk about, I guess."
"You have a tale to tell," agreed Frank G. "Don't we all."
"Every time, I say to myself-- just stand up, speak your piece, two or three sentences, sit right down again. And I always end up doing five minutes. I think the problem is, meeting's one of the few places where I make sense to myself."
Frank G. nodded in his way, meaning
I agree,
and
I've been there,
as well as
It's all been said before,
and at times,
Go on
. He had the sort of dour, everyman face you find on the can't-sleep guy in a cold-remedy commercial, or the beleaguered car-pool dad suffering from occasional acid indigestion. "It's a gift, having a place like this to go. To sort it all out, keep focused. Some people, it's addictive. Too generous a gift."
"You noticed," said Doug.
"Sad-eyed Billy T. Getting off on the shame like that. It's opening night every night with him, rising to sing his song and spill his tears until they drop that curtain. That's his drunk now."
"Gotta feel that shame, though. Someone like me-- I got nobody to let down, except myself. Nobody at home keeping me honest. Back in the Town"-- in meeting, Frank G. had once mentioned growing up in Charlestown, though with Doug he never acknowledged their common background-- "I don't feel it."
"The stigma."
"I talk about going to prison for beating someone up in a bar, there it's like, 'Hey, it happens. Some guy needed fine-tuning, but you did your time, you got out'-- like something I hadda endure. Like I been in the army two years. People downstairs here? I mention prison and their eyes bug out, they pull their purses closer. And this is Malden, not some soft suburb-- but it reminds me I'm not always living in the real world, where I am."
"Nobody's here looking for friends," said Frank G. "This here, you and I, this isn't friends. This is a partnership. What we have is a pact. That said, I don't know what all this is exactly about your being out there on your own."
"Okay. You're right."
"I'm your wife in this. Me, I'm your kids. I'm your parents and I'm your priest. You let yourself down, you let us all down, the whole system crumbles. And as to the others listening to you-- hey, so they're not asking you for a ride back to the T. They respect the work. You're doing it. Coming up on two years? That's getting it
done
. I'd take respect over back pats, any day."
An old man came shuffling up the center aisle, shrugging on his raincoat, saluting them before hitting the door. "Billy T.," said Frank G., waving good-bye, watching the church door close. "Wonder what he goes home to, huh? If he's got anybody but himself to answer to." He shook his head at the character of the guy, then shook him all the way off. "But one thing I don't get about you, and it's a big one. Why you're still doing your two the hard way. After all you learned here-- why you don't know you can't be around people who drink."
Doug made an impatient noise, knowing Frank G. was right and also knowing Doug wasn't about to change. "You choose your friends, right? But not your family? Well, my friends-- they are my family. I'm stuck with them, they're stuck with me."
"People grow up and leave their families, guy. They move on."
"Yeah, but the thing with that is-- they actually keep me sober. That's how this works. By their example. Seeing them fuck up over and over-- that works for me."
"Okay. So hanging around with knuckleheads makes you feel smarter."
"It's like lifting weights. Resistance training. The temptation is to give in, to skip that last rep, short the weight, arms burning. I ignore all that, finish out my set. Being with them reminds me that I'm strong. Reminds me I'm doing this. Without that, I could get lazy."
"Okay, Doug. And I hear you, right? And I still think you're packed full of crap. This uncle of mine, right? His wife died, he's getting ready to go to a nursing home, and I'm helping get him set up there. Decent attitude, all things considered. Month or so ago, we're sitting in Friendly's over grilled cheeses. All-around good guy, telling me how now he looks back over his life and thinks,
Hey, if only I knew then what I know now
. Not regrets necessarily, just his perspective now, you know? That whole,
Youth is wasted on the young
thing. And I was polite and all, sucking my Fribble through a straw. But I'm looking at him, this uncle of mine, struggling to get that flat yellow sandwich into his mouth, and I'm thinking-- no way. He'd do things
exactly
the same way he did them before, even knowing what he knows now. Drop him back into his life at twenty-one, twenty-five? He'd slip right back into the moment, make all those same mistakes. Because that's
who he is
." Frank G. leaned closer to the back of Doug's pew, resting his forearms on the top and lacing his fingers. "So who are you?"
"Me?"
"What makes Doug M. think he's different from everyone else."
"I guess-- only because I
am
different from everyone else."
"Fine, good. We got a problem here, let's address it." Frank G.'s hands grappled with the air. "You don't seem to realize that you
are
your friends. That's who you are-- the people you attract, who you keep around you. Now, I'm a part of you, right? Just a little taste, maybe-- lucky dog, you. A bigger part is this goddamn cancer tumor part, I'm talking about your knucklehead friends. Seeing them tonight?"
"Yeah."
"Okay. Do this for me. Take a good long look around. Because those faces you see staring back-- that's you."
Doug wanted to answer that, wanted to lodge his protest. He wanted Frank G. to know he was more than the sum of his friends.
The priest was out in his black suit and Roman collar, cupping his hand around the candles on the altar, blowing flames into smoke. "Looks like last call," said Frank G.
Doug said, "I think I might've met someone."
Frank G. was quiet awhile, a silence more meaningful than a simple pause. Doug suffered through it, alternately sickened by his desire to please Frank G. and hoping he had succeeded.
"She in the program?"
"No," said Doug, surprised.
Frank G. nodded like that was a good thing. "What does it mean when you
think
you meet someone?"
"I don't even know. I don't know what that means."
Frank G. rapped a knuckle on the back of Doug's pew, like a blackjack dealer knocking a push. "Take things slow, that's all. Take care picking who you hook up with. Attraction does not equal destiny, the thirst teaches you that too. Not to break your tender heart here, kid, but nine times out of ten, romance is a problem, not a solution." Frank G.'s brows remained high over long-sober eyes. "Aside from not walking into a bar alone, my friend, this is the most important choice you're ever gonna make."
7
Saturday Night Fever
D
OUG CONTINUED ON TO the Tap that night because he had told them all he would. Upstairs was filled with warm bodies arranged around a glass bar underneath some nouveau lighting, lots of laughter and clinking and the general hubbub of people working on their weekend buzz. Whiny guitar chords warned drinkers away from the doorway leading to the smaller rear room and its one-light, one-stool stage. All the young professionals who couldn't get into the Warren Tavern on a Saturday night, this place was their Plan B.
Doug turned down into the narrow stairway just inside the front door, descending into the haze of smoke. Downstairs was old-Town style, brick-walled and low-ceilinged, a dungeon of piss and beer. A glass bar here wouldn't last one night without shattering. Cases of empties formed benches along the walls, and a CD jukebox pumped in the corner like a beating heart. The bathrooms were grim but never crowded, drawing buzz-emboldened ladies from Upstairs, picking their way through the hometown crowd like debutantes at a sewerage convention with minced
Excuse me
faces, French-tipped nails pointed toward the His and Hers.
"MacRaaay!"
hailed Gloansy from the bar, jumping up on the iron-pipe foot rail. He had that crazed, this-night-will-last-forever burn in his army-green eyes.
Doug made his way there, letting maniacal Gloansy hug him and slap his back. "'S'up?"
"I'm getting there, man. You good?"
Splash, the wet-handed barman, saw Doug and shouted something along the lines of
Long time, no see,
then slapped down an automatic soda-water lime. Splash spilled every drink he served. Doug answered Gloansy by taking a slurp of soda water, then looked around the room.
Gloansy had already signaled Jem, who detached himself from two sour-looking kids Doug didn't know and made his way toward the bar, a lane opening up for him. Jem, in turn, thinking Doug couldn't see him, gestured to the corner to hail Krista, and like half-drunk chessmen on a crowded, sticky board, the pieces made their moves. Krista stopped stirring her bourbon and Coke and placed a hand on Joanie Lawler's forearm, starting away from their conversation, and Joanie-- a sturdy, frog-faced girl from the projects, the mother of Gloansy's boy, Nicky, and Gloansy's longtime bride-to-be-- shooed her on, mouthing something encouraging.
Dez fed the corner juke a dollar bill and The Cranberries' "Linger" came on, a recent favorite on the all-Irish Downstairs playing list. Another hour or so and Dez would be firmly installed there for the night, the self-declared DJ, enforcing the mood, clearing out any malingering yuppies with a barrage of Clancy Brothers and accordion jigs before getting serious with a late-night set of U2.
Jem came up and telegraphed a roundhouse right, following through at half-speed, Doug playing along, snapping his head back in mock contact. Doug returned a sharp,
Star Trek
jab to the face that back-stepped Jem, who in his zeal for Hollywood splashed a pair of idle, hoop-earringed girls with foam out of his High Life longneck.
"The mastermind," greeted Jem.
"The masturbator," said Doug, smacking Jem's fists.
"Not anymore," Jem reminded him, killing his beer with a muscular flourish and pointing hard at Splash. "Four Highs."
Gloansy smiled, never tiring of the horseplay. "Jem kid, I think you shot a little beer cum on those ladies there."
Jem turned, the neighborhood girls glaring at their blouses like they'd been bled on. They were sore but receptive, and any politeness at all-- an apology, a napkin, the offer of a free drink-- might have opened the door to opening their legs. But Jem dismissed them with a nasty grin. He'd only be kissing beer bottles tonight.
